Toby Harris

Ford VJ

2007

I was the VJ Imagination, a world-leading communication agency, partnered with to develop the ‘Ford VJ experience’. This not only turned motor industry messaging on its head and took me around the globe, but shook the event world, reaping numerous industry awards including a Grand Prix.

Geneva'07

A phone call from Imagination: combine vjing and ugc with us to realise ‘feel the difference’ at the Ford stand, Geneva motor show. Nobody had done anything like this before: Non-trivial, no sleep, NDAs. It was only the combination of my ableton+vdmx structured improvisation audiovisual work in rbn_esc, with the then private-beta vdmx5 combining arbitrary sized hi-res output with user-programmable plug-ins that allowed me to say yes. Integrate with database of text, images and voxpops, display those in the mix in a designed manner, whilst vjing together a live music video which in itself is a real test for a performer: a tall order, even in an ideal world. Rinse and repeat, for a fortnight. Big thanks to Jesse for helping with the Quartz Composer side, and Mo for coming through with the local footage.

Amsterdam'07

The geneva project was deemed a success, the AutoRai, a smaller show in Amsterdam was just around the corner: so off we went. Setup was to-plan, we got great Amsterdam footage from Dr Mo, we made some tweaks. We had it down, we worked it through, the mixes we smooth: it was a good experience all round, and I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the VJ setup to really dial it in to our needs.

Frankfurt'07

Frankfurt gave the opportunity to take everything that I had learnt through the baptism-of-fire that was Geneva to refactor the VJ setup. Not dissimilar on the surface, but underneath was a custom patch that was a live equivalent of an after effects project: it contained all the compositing, effects, animations and transitions we needed, and exposed just functionality needed through VDMX. Perhaps just as importantly, it hid the things that could cause any nasties!

Los Angeles'07

For the American circuit, Imagination had commissioned Jasmin to art direct and produce four ‘vj’ style tracks. As the setup side for Geneva had swallowed so much time, it was a real gift to see somebody be able to start from scratch and devote all the resources to the content and aesthetic.

Bologna'07

The Italians really know how to do a motor show. Despite being a small show in the grander scheme of these things, it was the only show that actually had really cool car things like… a racetrack! 4x4 assult courses!

Geneva'08

Back to Geneva, one year on. With memories of still working on the to-do list on the plane out there and then things that should just have plugged in but somehow lost us days of the build instead, it was a pleasure to walk in to a known setup, load the fresh content and just play.

Diary entries

is that when you finish working on the materials at 7am, and have a few hours to kill until the presentation later that morning, you can go out and take photos in the new found winter wonderland. this is my local, and more a visual joke than photo, but hey.

i’ve just arrived back from, well, from a very big thing. quit-your-job type thing. i signed a non-disclosure-agreement in december, things were set by january, had quit apple not long thereafter, february was intense pre-production, and then it really happened: two and a bit weeks at the geneva motor show, putting out a four minute vj mix every 16 minutes, a peer to the hd brand videos on the immense led wall.
its a really amazing project as the vj is not there for sparkle, but more akin to tom cruise in minority report, taking in a flow of user generated content and magic’ing it onto the big screen. massive props to imagination for the concept and the multi-disciplinary clout to make it happen, and to ford for really going out on one with this project.
i would write more, but i’ve only 36 hours back in london before being off again: a short break after all this and then straight into the amsterdam motor show. onwards!

but thats an exact 1:1 pixel mapping on the LED wall, which we got to in minutes rather than days. shame its not the geneva monster-wall, but you can’t have it all. anyway, progress. and hello jilt, fellow vj along with olga for the amsterdam motor show.

a steadycam operator on an all-terrain segway type thing… you can imagine the cool shots made possible, but it looked straight out of some robocop/terminator future. and, of course, i want i want i want.

its tuesday, its the first day not working for over two weeks, and with the next month or so paid up from this to devote to developing the setup and contributing to the cultural side. there is a little description of amsterdam on the photo page, suffice to say it was a smooth experience, we had it down, we had a nice time. very rewarding to have that experience after the challenges of getting the project to the 1.0 of geneva.

so here i am editing on the latest apple laptop using the latest final cut pro, and yet as the flow of the work goes, it feels just like 2001. editing in fcp2 on my beloved tibook. however, thats not to say the edit is equivalent: this is a motion graphic’d promo piece in sexy hd. amusingly enough, not even my cinema display has enough pixels.

our shiny gold award, via the cameraphone of dan sloane, imagination’s tech master for the vj project. the ford vj area won the best exhibition feature area at friday’s event awards 2007 at the natural history museum. huzzah!

hello jasmin and her superproduced content commissioned for the american shows. the (and i use the word loosely) car driving in is something to behold: a “green” monster truck, complete with rocket-launcher-esque hydrogen tanks racked up on the back.

the second day of the motor show was picketed by anti-car protesters. i barely got in to the show, check further back in the photo and you’ll see the red banners of them marching in to close down the entrance. photo was just holding the camera up and pointing back. crazy times. should i mention i ride a push-bike around london?

saturday was super-rammed. and then this guy came round, as if in a bubble. totally immersed, clicking things in space in front of him. no way of finding out more or hitting up the autowebpagediarylogthing the rig may or may not produce.

hello gianluca, organiser of avit-like live performers meeting. while i couldn’t be part of the event as i was doing this in frankfurt, it came in useful when a selection of italian vjs was needed to chose my vj partner here…

back again at the salon d’auto, and what a difference a year makes. smooth setup, new content, all good. even when walking straight in off the plane, having had a gig in newcastle the night before… eek!